Sunday, April 29, 2007

That old symbol of the unity of peasants and workers looks set to get whitewashed out of history.

The Polish government is currently cooking up a bill in parliament to remove all communist symbols which you can still see on the outside of buildings, on monuments and in some cemeteries.

This is just one part, of course, of the de-communization of Poland that so drives most of the ruling coalition.

The symbol in Poland can only have nostalgia for a few deluded folk, and the hip retro-ketch crowd. There is a craze for opening commie retro restaurants, and they seem relatively popular – though Poland lacks the oustalgia currently trendy in Germany.

But in Russia and parts of the old Soviet Union, the symbol still has resonance. The Bryansk Oblast district flag includes the hammer and sickle.The ‘republic’ of Transnistria also uses the hammer and sickle in its national flag.

But most incredibly, the former Soviet airline (now Russian), Aeroflot, continues to use the hammer and sickle as part of its symbol.

The coat of arms of the Republic of Austria, btw, shows an eagle holding a hammer and a sickle in its claws. Nice, isn't it? Reference on the Web: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswappen_%C3%96sterreichs.

Those who know Poland know that attitudes and mindsets run deep and their influence can have a negative impact long after the formal institutions have gone. Everything possible should be done to change those attitudes and mindsets. I know many people who still think in a vertical, command and control/scarcity economy mindset, and this is hurting Poland more than anything else right now. Communist symbols only operate as distractions and perpetuations of an older culture. Get rid of them.

For interesting evidence of the persistence of mindsets in France, for example, read this column in the Times (london):

I am against scrubbing away history too. It’s taking the meaning of ‘lustration’ (something to do with ‘cleansing’) to it’s absurd conclusion, I suppose).

But the Aeroflot insistence of sticking with hammers and sickles is just nuts.

"This is an old Russian brand, which everyone associates with Aeroflot. This logo is so harmonious that is has proved difficult to replace," Aeroflot's deputy director general, Lev Koshlyakov, told the French news agency AFP.

Aeroflot has a terrible brand image – aeroFLOP …so cleansing the past in that case would be a very good idea.

"I know many people who still think in a vertical, command and control/scarcity economy mindset, and this is hurting Poland more than anything else right now."

Leaving aside the question of how much this is hurting Poland (I can think of things I think are hurting more) those two ways of thinking go back before communism.

Polish people are hierarchical, according to research among the most hierarchical in Europe (see Hofstede). The church has just as much to do with that as communism.

The second comes from European peasant culture (though it's not limited to europe by any means).It's called the 'theory of the limited good' (or something like that).

Removing soviet memorabilia only reinforces these two ways of thinking. On the one hand, the meta-message is that history is what the people in charge right now say it is. It also underlines a fixed unchanging concept of public space, where any particular ideology can only grow at the expense of others.

I am going to investigate this 'hierachical' idea later...it seems to fit with much I have observed (including sitting around waiting for the boss to have an all the ideas - all they do (older ones, particulalrly) is complain about chnge, but never try and initiate it).

But what you are saying Mike also goes with the curent 'change street names' idea.

"I wouldn't even mind some fascist symbols remaining on display." korakious, have a good flight with those symbols.

"It's a history whitewash" - Beat, whenever history hasn't been faced and digested properly, then you find these street name fights and symbol clashes: and the USSR or CIS and Eastern Europe haven't faced their own history so far. And not only Polish people are hierarchical, if we are at that...

Following the logic of the most recent thread, I suppose that buildings in Berlin should still have swastikas on them. Remember the famous newsreel of the swastika on a building in Germany being blown up? History should be handled by historians in schools and photographs and they can do a good job of it. The Germans have put almost everything into history books, as far as I know. Those buildings left standing have been made into museums.

There was an interesting article in the NYT recently that emphasizes the need for a common history book in Lebanon as perhaps the best tool to unify the country (currently, Christians teach their own version of the Civil War, Muslims their own version, etc.). That plays a much more important role in preserving history than a building or a street name.

Agreed that the hierarchical thinking probably pre-dates communism; point well taken. However one has to start somewhere to accelerate the change. The removal of communist symbols and its importance shouldn't be confused with the wacky antics of the Ducklings.

BTW, saw that you had commented on Blida. Earlier question withdrawn, sorry.

The big difference between Estonia and Poland is that there's no local constituency nostalgic for the Soviet Union here (despite government hysteria to the contrary) while a quarter or so of the population in Estonia arguably is.

I don't know enough about Estonia to say anything intelligent about the monument controversy there except ... that moving the monument represents no political gain whatsoever (while angering a considerable portion of the population as well as a large and economically necessary neighbor).Not smart politics in anybody's book.

“That old symbol of the unity of peasants and workers” – certainly the most grotesque misrepresentation of what the old soviet symbol was. Being more blood drenched then the swastika is it’s only historic distinction.

The impact on Germany of banning the swastika was it positive or negative?

The importance of symbolism in Poland versus other societies is also something to consider. Often memory and myth were very important in the persistence of an idea of Poland and expressed in symbols.

What is important is not to forget the past but to be seen to have buried it. I fully agree with making the hammer and sickle an illegal symbol. The issue of the Palace of Culture also needs to be addressed by means of its immediate demolition.

Beatroot said: “You see, we should out all this in the context of what is going on in Estonia...another battle with historical symbols”

Less about historic symbolism and more about ethnic tensions. The Russian minority found a focus point to express their frustrations with not being treated as equals. The Estonians view these Russians as colonists sent to Estonia to complete the Soviet plans for genocide there.

The Estonians could have defused this by not lumping all Russians in the same pot. Maintaining dignified recognition of ordinary Russians who drove out the Nazis and emphasizing condemnation of the Soviet government and it security services.

It is interesting that nobody has yet quoted the classic Anne Applebaum's rant that while everyone despises swastikas, not much contempt is held for the communist symbols:

in post-war Germany, Nazi memorabilia was illegal, the Nazi party was banned - and it has never revived on any large scale. The German state paid enormous reparations to individual Jews (if not always to others) and to the state of Israel. While the Germans may not have talked much about the war in public, official histories of the war were published, monuments were constructed. Everyone knew about Nuremburg; the groundwork was laid for the younger generation to discover the past. By the 1960s - sparked, in fact, by the trial of Auschwitz guards - when the national debate finally began, at least it was possible for the children of Nazis to discover what their parents had done. By the 1980s, the past had almost become a national obsession. [...] In Eastern Europe, by contrast, communist symbols and songs are not banned. Communist parties are not banned everywhere either. On the contrary, although the laws vary from country to country, in many places communist parties have been allowed to retain their (sometimes enormous) assets: buildings, foreign bank accounts, membership lists, cars and homes. Retired communist party members continue to receive outsize pensions.

Applebaum then spends a lot of time trying to analyze the issue, yet she brilliantly manages to miss the point. The reason the swastikas are despised is that the Nazism has been blamed in Nuremberg on the top NSDAP officials, and the common people who supported the regime have been, in this way, absolved. The war is thus being seen not as an action of the German people, but of the misterious group of the Nazis, who have appeared out of nowhere in the 1930s and disappeared in 1945; and the German people were but theirs victim. The origin of Nazis is not discussed, so it is logical to conclude that they were the aliens of some sort.

The communism, on the other hand, ended its life without the symbolic trials of the scapegoats; and so, every citizen of a post-communist country has been left with judging his own contribution in supporting the murderous system. And everyone was supporting it to some extent; because such was its pervasive, all-encompassing nature. And it lasted for tens of years, so it has - the horror! - built many things directed at the well-being of its people. To reject the communism altogether, would thus mean to reject a part of one's own.

I am not aware of any buildings in Poland prominently deplaying the hammer and sickle; because it was always viewed as a symbol of oppression and so, avoided. But if something like this remains, yes, it should be definitely removed.

But, the legislation is most likely directed at the monuments and graves comemorating the death of Soviet soldiers on Polish territory, which do, in fact, display such insignia. To me, such move would be analogous to removing the crosess from Christian graves; it would be nothing short of a desecration.

I, for one, would ban no symbols at all. Some are offensive: the swastika is deeply.

And if you remember what Jannovak57 said, the way Stalin treated the peasants and kulaks then the hammer with a sickle is pretty revolting as well. But that is because I am interpreting hammer/sickle in that way. To others it means something else. So it isn’t some object that you can bash me over the head with.

Offensive they may be: but that’s about it. They can’t do anything to us but offend. And as we are adults, being offended is just part of life. A symbol of a hammer and sickle can’t harm us – a real hammer and a real sickle could. A symbol is just a symbol.

OpampThe Nazis and Germans. I read a book called Hitler’s Willing Executioners. It looks not just at what the brown shirted party members did, or the top shock troops, he looks at what the people did (can’t remember who wrote it…it’s on my shelf but am too tired to go look for it).

He looks at the ideology of Nazism and how it took hold. He looks at all the other Germans that resisted them too.

But you are right: people must take responsibility for what they do. And what they don’t do. Same with Poles. Same with the British.

But there again – I am not responsible for colonialism or slavery. Or Yalta. So don’t expect me, or younger Germans to say sorry for anything other than what we responsible for today.

Harry said... ” Er, those would be the same ordinary Russians who drove out the Nazis who had driven out the Russians who invaded Estonia and declared it to be part of the USSR? “

The draftees that made up the Red army came extensively from farms and factory i.e. ordinary people swept up by history this group undertook must of the combat and therefore most of the casualties. In so far as the destruction of the Nazis goes this has to be recognized as a noble action. Have no illusions the NKVD and communist apparatus stayed in the rear areas were they got to perpetrate atrocities against the “newly liberated populations” in relative safety.

The history of Soviet atrocities when invading is pretty disgusting. That’s why Poles feared the Russians even more than Germans. There is a history of some nasty behaviour. And each of them has to take responsibility for the rapes, etc.

But we have to draw a continuum of guilt. Those with authority who tell people what to do, must be worse than the person who takes the order.

Oh yes. The issue is that the willing executioners have blamed everything on the scapegoats in Nuremberg and then relegated it to history books. And now they have the decency to claim to be victims, because they were driven out of their homes. After all, they didn't start the war; the Nazis did!

Interestingly, Lucy Davidowitz (noted in the review as an "intentionalist" -- a historian who argued that "the German all- but-total elimination of European Jewry was the consequence either of the intentions of a few mad leaders who were able to coerce an otherwise decent people into becoming tools in their vicious schemes") was the woman who was probably the main force in coldcocking Norman Davies, author of God's Playground: A History of Poland, out of getting tenure at Stanford.

From the Wikipedia article on Davies:

(Dawidowitz and others) object(ed) to Davies' historical treatment of the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland. They accuse him of minimising historic antisemitism, and of promoting a view that the Holocaust occupies a position in international historiography which tends to minimise the suffering of non-Jewish Poles and even denounce them as antisemites. Davies’ supporters contend that he gives due attention to the genocide and war crimes perpetrated by both Hitler and Stalin on Polish Jews and non-Jews. Davies himself argues that "Holocaust scholars need have no fears that rational comparisons might threaten that uniqueness. Quite the opposite." and that "...one needs to re-construct mentally the fuller picture in order to comprehend the true enormity of Poland’s wartime cataclysm, and then to say with absolute conviction ‘Never Again’."34

In 1986, Dawidowicz’s criticism of Davies’ historical treatment of the Holocaust was cited as a factor in a controversy at Stanford University in which Davies was denied a tenured faculty position for alleged "scientific flaws". Davies sued the university for breach of contract and defamation of character, but in 1989 the court ruled that it did not have jurisdiction in an academic matter.

I have met Davies twice. I worked with his son. And when you meet someone you get a feeling about them. The guy is certainly not minimizing the Holocaust. He never takes away the Jewish suffering, but he does remind of other sufferings, too.

And that university thing was a scandal, but not unusual. And it’s got much worse since then. Academic freedom? Hah, ha…

To insinuate he was anti-Semite (which they did, I think) is just stupid.

Wait a minute. After reading and trying to digest the whole article, I can see how you say, BR, that Germans very surprisingly loved it (although this did not happen all at once; indeed at first the conservatives attacked Goldhagen while the liberals championed him. But later the poles were reversed in their consideration of Goldhagen according to the review piece).

But I am confused as to why you conclude Christians hated Goldhagen's book Willing Executioners.

While the Christian(?) reviewer Michael Zank actually criticized Goldhagen for redemptively mythologizing German democratic progress since WWII, I don't get any sense from the article that the religious of the Protestant or Catholic churches were similarly or otherwise critical of the Goldhagen.

But, nonetheless, Zank's conclusions seem to shed some light on what's going on in Poland these days:

"Since I am not a sociologist or a political scientist I cannot assess the validity of the argument from the perspective of these disciplines. As a scholar of religion, however, I recognize myths of redemption when I see them. Subscribing to the Enlightenment as he does, Goldhagen shares the idea that human beings and their behavior can be improved if one educates them properly; or, as Goethe rhymed, "Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, den können wir erlösen." The classic secularized myth of redemption. The alleged difference in German thinking before and after 1945 is meant to prove that profound change can happen if a sufficient effort is made. A murderous deviant society can be turned into a peace loving member of the human family. How we wish that matters were that simple! Vanquish the enemy, then reeducate.

Social and political myths of redemption have been coming and going for the past 250 years but that does not mean that we have become tired of dreaming. Goldhagen's narrative implied that Germans once were evil and now are good, no longer dangerous and paradigmatically democratic, a story tailormade for Germans desiring, however unconsciously, to bury the past by overcoming it. By providing Germans with such a quasi religious perspective on the past Goldhagen's engaging treatise and the ensuing debates paradoxically contributed to a closure of our thinking on the Holocaust rather than to a continued effort to understand the fundamental and critical implications of this event for Western civilization, and civilization in general."

GeeZI read the book about four years ago, so it's a bit haZy...but in the early chapters he looks at the inherent anti-Semitism in Christianity. You still see this today - remember my review of Giertychs latest magnus opus? 'They rejected Him, that's why their lives have been shit...' etc.

So you're saying that Goldhagen was critical of German Christians and they responded in-kind. That could have been the case but I've seen no documentation of that occurence (not that I've looked at all). Very weird though that Zank, writing in the Journal of Religious Studies (or somesuch), didn't even so much as mention the German Christian response to the book or Goldhagen. Seems to me Zank just chronicled the political response of intellectuals of the left and right (again without noting the response of self-identifying Christian intellectuals or others who might be expected to comment).

Well, ugh, Bill Donohue, Michael Novak, and George Weigel for the Catholic League. But they have about as much relation to the Vatican as the stinky socks I have laying in the corner.

But even they (not my socks) sometimes do make valid criticisms and it seems that Goldhager was zapped by most serious historians from all over the political spectrum, especially for _A Moral Reckoning_. And that Jewish guy authoring the linked article too.

Thanks for the citations. I somehow missed the uproar. Now, I gotta look to see where Goldhager wound up -- while Davies got zapped at Stanford.

Are any of you Polish? Polish people are not historically all farmers and industrial employees. Poland is a country of art and intellect. Communism reassigned scientists to store clerks and store clerks to be in control of schools.

Have any of you lived in Poland during communism? Any of you ever had to wake up at 4:00 am to line up at the market to buy something other than milk and cheese for dinner? Have you ever had to bribe someone or ride the bus to the next town just to see if you could find black panty hose, or panty hose in general?

The sickle and hammer belongs to Russia. Poland is not Russia. As a matter of fact, after the war, Poland lost part of its land mass thanks to the "allies," who did not respond to S.O.S. pleas from the Polish ghetto, but you know the Jews were the only people who suffered the war - they all fled to other countries and found a better life. The Poles lost all their personal family property to communism and had to deal with shortages and side-jobs to make ends meet.

The Polish symbol is a giant, angry looking bird, much like the Phoenix. The Poles did not erect those symbols, and they are someone else's history.

whats wrong with a symbol that represents the true people of a country, the working class, the ones who do all the work while others sit in their offices and get paid for doing nothing, the symbol stays because it gives the working class something to be proud of, they are the ones in charge, without them their nation would not exist, through struggles brought upon by the gov. the working class still manages to pull through, why? bec they are strong, they are keen, they know what to do and when to do it.

Wouldn't banning a symbol be interference in the economy since a business couldn't use the symbol if it thought it would help it make money? And isn't interference in the economy socialist? So by banning this symbol Poland would actually be moving closer to communism.

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